Cult - Aimee Friberg Exhibitions

SF Art Galleries - Openings & Events Event source calendar Event Link: see venue calendar above ^^ William Roper-Curzon: Reflections on Mani September 10–October 24, 2026 Artist Walk-through: Thursday, September 10, 5:30 pm Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 6–8 pm Request Preview CULT Aimee Friberg is pleased to present Reflections on Mani, a solo exhibition of new paintings by British-born, Athens-based artist William Roper-Curzon. Rooted in the landscape of Greece’s Mani Peninsula, the exhibition brings together paintings made directly in the landscape alongside larger works developed from memory in the artist’s studio in Athens. The exhibition runs from September 10 to October 24 at CULT Aimee Friberg (1401 16th Street). The artist will be present on September 10 from 6–8 pm for a reception, with a walk-through preceding the opening at 5:30 pm. At the southern edge of the Peloponnese, Mani is one of Greece’s wildest and most elemental landscapes—a terrain of exposed limestone, rocky outcrops, pebbled beaches and steep hills descending into crystalline turquoise waters. Olive trees, prickly pears and silvery-green scrub emerge from the dry earth, while the colors of the hills shift between purple, brown, yellow and green beneath the bright, intense light of an unobstructed sun. Roper-Curzon has returned repeatedly to Mani, drawn to both its physical rawness and the sense of an older world that remains palpable there. Pausanias, the geographer famous for his travel writing and descriptions of Greece in the Roman era, wrote of its sacred places and traditions, while centuries later Constantine VII recorded the persistence of ancestral beliefs and practices among its people. For Roper-Curzon, this history is not separate from the landscape but seems embedded within it. The majority of the paintings in Reflections on Mani were made en plein air, painted directly in oil on board while traveling through the peninsula. Making these works is an intensely physical practice, requiring stamina and endurance. Roper-Curzon hikes into the rugged terrain carrying his materials, immersing himself in conditions that are as demanding as they are beautiful—exposed rock, relentless light and heat, prickly vegetation, turquoise sea and vast horizons. Jewel-toned poppies and other wildflowers, evergreen shrubs, spiny plants and aromatic herbs punctuate the otherwise arid landscape. Bombarded by light, heat and color, painting becomes less an act of observation than one of surrender—a process of stripping away the unnecessary, working instinctively, and responding to what is happening in a particular place and moment. The exhibition’s larger oil-on-canvas paintings extend this process in a different direction. Made after Roper-Curzon returned to his Athens studio, they draw upon memory rather than direct observation. Forms become more abstracted and color untethered from naturalistic description, giving the works an ethereal and almost psychedelic quality. Memory becomes a kind of threshold through which the physical experience of Mani mingles with something less tangible—the atmosphere, mythology and ancient presence of the place. In his geographical account of the region, Pausanias connects the island of Cranae, just off present-day Gytheio, to Homer’s tale of Paris and Helen’s flight from Sparta toward Troy. In these studio paintings, memory allows the landscape to shift away from the literal and toward something more intuitive and unknown. The distinction between these two modes of working—one immersed physically in place, the other channeling its sensations at a distance—creates a productive tension throughout the exhibition. Roper-Curzon is a painter’s painter, deeply versed in color theory and possessing a confident, intuitive command of palette. Color in these works is both observational and psychological. The bright spectrum of light from deep winter to late spring is translated through intense, saturated hues: crystalline turquo…